In all the excitement about the establishment of a name and broad dates for release of the next version of SharePoint it would be easy to overlook the upcoming release of a mere service pack.  But don’t miss out on the release of this one.  Each time Microsoft has released a service pack or update for SharePoint there has been a marked improvement in functionality and stability.  SP2 will be no exception and the Office Service Pack team just announced that the it will be available on April 28th.  A short list of anticipated improvements for your SharePoint server is quoted from the release announcement below.  You’ll want to read the release announcement to look at all the changes in store for the whole office platform.  You can read the whole announcement here.  In two weeks I’ll add a link pointing to where you can download the Service Packs for WSS and MOSS.

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 SP2 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server SP2 include fixes and enhancements designed to improve performance, availability, and stability in your server farms. SP2 provides the groundwork for future major releases of SharePoint Products and Technologies.

• An STSADM command line that scans your server farm to establish whether it is ready for upgrade to the next version of SharePoint and provides feedback and best practice recommendations on your current environment.
• SP2 offers support for a broader range of Web browsers.
• Substantial improvements to Forms-based authentication.

Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server R2 will be supported on their release.

Enterprise Content Management (ECM)

• The performance and stability of content deployment and variations feature has been improved.
• A new tool has been added to the STSADM command-line utility that enables a SharePoint administrator to scan sites that use the variations feature for errors.

WSS SP2 Download - Get It Here!

MOSS SP2 Download - Get It Here!